U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos' Letter Urging His Colleagues to Support the Lawsuit Against Jiang Zemin

Dear Colleague:

Since 1999, the Chinese Government has engaged in systematic persecution of peaceful Falun Gong practitioners. Chinese citizens who practice Falun Gong are locked away in prison or psychiatric institutions for years on end, and are often tortured in an effort to get them to renounce their beliefs.

On October 18, 2002, Falun Gong practitioners in the U.S. and abroad took decisive legal action to stop this systematic and brutal persecution. During former Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit last year to the United States, Falun Gong practitioners and their families filed a lawsuit in the Northern District Court of Illinois against Jiang and the "6/10 Office" which has responsibility for persecuting Falun Gong. The lawsuit, filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act, seeks compensatory and punitive damages for torture, genocide and other crimes against humanity committed by former President Jiang and the "6/10 Office" against Falun Gong practitioners.

Congress approved the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act, in part, to give individuals who have been brutalized by authoritarian regimes abroad redress in the U.S. court system. For Chinese and American citizens who have been illegally sent to prisons and psychiatric institutions against their will, suffered brutal physical and mental torture, and made to live in appalling conditions, there is no hope that the Chinese court system will bring them justice. The Falun Gong lawsuit filed in Illinois provides just that hope.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Justice has filed a motion to dismiss the Falun Gong lawsuit pending in Northern District Court of Illinois. The Administration asserts that former President Jiang was insufficiently served with a summons (even though the summons was given to those around him), that allowing Jiang to be sued in American courts risks retaliatory suits against U.S. officials (a point considered, and explicitly rejected, by Congress when it approved these laws), and that Jiang enjoys sovereign immunity as Chinese president (even though he is no longer President of China).

In short, instead of promoting the use of the two laws designed to give hope to victims of gross violations of human rights abroad, the Administration has aggressively sided with Beijing in part to avoid friction in our bilateral relationship.

To redress this imbalance, we will seek to file an Amicus Curae brief with the Northern District Court of Illinois in support of the arguments raised by Falun Gong practitioners and explicitly rejecting certain arguments raised by the Administration. The brief asserts that Congress has a legitimate interest in upholding the integrity of the two statutes and its interests in international human rights issues, that many of theses issues should be resolved without intervention by the Justice Department, that Congress recognized and accepted the potential adverse consequences of lawsuits against high-level foreign officials when it passed these laws, and that Jiang no longer enjoys sovereign immunity as a former head of state.

Sincerely,

Tom Lantos
Ranking Democratic Member

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